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the remainder of the day-a new and holy tie seemed added to their former bonds; a sweet seriousness, by no means allied to sadness, sat on the face of the younger; whilst smiles, as of welcome to new, blessings and enlarged affections, illumined the countenance of the elder, who were both still under nineteen-most elegant and accomplished young women, moving in the first circles of society. I am well aware, that all high-wrought emotions, however pure and exalted, must subside; but they leave, like the rose, a fragrance when their bloom is faded; and I am justified in believing, that these sisters played their next duet together, contrived a new dress for their mother, or engaged in any of the common occupations of life, with increased attachment and more lively interests, in consequence of the sympathy in devotional feelings they had experienced for, and with, each other."

that has within it a spring of feeling, ever to get indifferent to flowers, provided only it acts towards them in a spirit of appropriating love. "I can conceive,' says our amiable friend, "a possibility, that being constantly surrounded by a variety of fine flowers, in the garden, in the greenhouse, and in every part of the dwelling-house, which no one seems to regard, which are tended and watered by servants, and of which she knows not, perhaps, half-a-dozen even by name,-may render a young lady careless, and altogether indifferent about them, who, under other circumstances, would have shewn a taste for their beauties, and an inclination for their culture. A different disposition might be otherwise influenced by the same habits; and might imbibe a taste for seeing, rearand intimate familiarity with their ing, or studying them, by her long beauty and fragrance.' Indeed,

The next article is entitled the Florist-and is adorned with a great number of the most beautiful plants, exquisitely cut in wood.

what plants are not "most beautiful?" All young ladies should be botanists. That study takes them out into the open air-and gives them all clear complexions. What a shame --what a sin, to know nothing of the

sweet names and the sweet natures of the lovely existences. scattered round our feet! No need to be looking up always to heaven-let our eyes be fixed often on the earth. Is not the earth all one garden? and may not every girl be a Proserpine now-a-days, without danger of being carried off by Pluto? Some bright Apollo will, perhaps, become enamoured of the fair Flora; but he will woo her reverently in the shade, and ere her gathered garland withers, be transformed before her eyes into Hymen. All hearts love flowers; but the understanding heart loves them far more deeply, and feels the silent leaf-language through all its hieroglyphics. The study of flowers is, of all studies of Nature's works, the most feminine. What exquisite tenderness may be shewn in their care! For are not blossoms like butterflies-and regarding them, may we not say with Wordsworth of Emmeline

"She-God love her-fear'd to brush The dust from off their wings."

It is scarcely possible for any heart

Too true,

that "familiarity begets contempt"a maxim we never liked, often as we used to put it into round-text under our writing-master. Familiarity produces that effect only among contemptible people; but who could in his or her heart feel contempt for the daisy

"Sweet flower, whose home is every where ?"

But neglect or indifference is nearly thy of our love; and we are all, alas! as sinful as contempt of things worguilty every hour we breathe of such base ingratitude. Suppose a young lady turning up her nose at flowers,

as

if they were rotten eggs? Or crushing them as if they were eggshells? Would she not by such an great harm" in flinging her like a act shew, that there would be no loathsome weed away," without having taken the trouble of previously rifling all her sweetness ?"

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"Should a young lady profess a total disregard of flowers, I should yet be unwilling to admit that she was incapable of feeling their sweet influence, though circumstances might have rendered her insensible to them; and should be inclined to propose to her a few questions, by way of ascertaining the cause of so (as it would seem to me) unfeminine an insensibility. I would ask her, If she had ever, during her infancy or childhood, been permitted to run, sit, walk, or gather wild-flowers

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in the green meadows? If she had ever waded, breast high, in the long grass, to gather buttercups and sorrel? If she had ever filled her frock with daisies, priding herself in finding the reddest lipped? If she had ever pelted her young companions with balls, made on the instant, with fresh-gathered cowslips, or slily adorned them with cleavers, (Galium Aparine, fig. 2,) and laughed to see their repeatedly vain endeavours to escape from their tenacious hold? If she had been permitted all these sports, and yet loved not these pretty toys of her childhood, I should, indeed, fear that her distaste were a deficiency of taste in general. I should conjecture, that she who loved not the lovely dress and various ornaments in which Nature and the Seasons are attired, would have little relish for the delightful scenery of Spenser; that she who failed to treasure up these early associations of innocent pleasures, would but ill appreciate the human sympathies of Shakspeare."

It is not, however, recommended by our judicious author, that a young lady should handle the spade and dig up the earth like an Irishman; or that she should purchase dung, preside over compost, and be initiated into all the mysteries of manure. But she may sow the seeds in the fit season; transplant, trim, and train; overlook sun and shade; and be herself the Naiad of the garden fountain. A garden, quoth our friend prettily, affords many light and graceful occupations to a young lady; as the removal of decayed leaves and flowers -raising and tying up roses, or other flowers, bending beneath the weight of their own beauty-training the convolvulus, sweet-pea, or other light climbers to their frames or lattices; uprooting the lighter weeds; and in some few instances, lightening them of their superfluous blossoms; or preserving strength to the roots, by removing the flowers ere their seed be ripened. But we must give a larger extract.

"Oh! those beautiful white lilies are out! How elegant is their form! How pure their whiteness! How delicate their texture! How majestic their height! This is the flower of Juno; and is, perhaps, the only one that could have saved that jealous goddess from grudging to Venus the possession

Of the rose, full-lipp'd and warm,
Round about whose riper form,
Her slender virgin train are seen,
In their close-fit caps of green.

Some other of the lilies shew well, side by side, with this white one: that fine red lily, called Jacobea, (Amaryllis formosissima, fig. 3,) for instance. The lilies are a noble family, and splendid in their attire. We see them glowing in the most dazzling colours-crimson, vermilion, and fire-colour; some dropped with gold; all large, rich, and elegant; yet we doom the rest of these fine flowers to oblivion, in favour of the white lilies. Though no flowers boast of finer, and of a greater variety of colours, we persist in considering them as emblems of the very perfection of whiteness and purity. It is remarkable, that with the exception of these bridal flowers, the lilies are particularly warm-coloured: they affect no pale pinks, blues, or lemon-colours,-but be it red, blue, or yellow, assume each hue in all its strength and power. The white lily has some colour, just enough to make it appear the whiter: the six large golden anthers play in the centre like flame in a It has been observed lamp of alabaster.

of flowers, that many of the more fragrant are the least handsome; as birds of the

homeliest plumage are mostly gifted with

the sweetest song; but the white lily has a perfume equal to its beauty."

Our author is equally good upon roses and many other flowers. His love of them is sincere and deep; and he betrays his familiar knowledge of all he speaks of in fond and affectionate phrases, warmed and tinged by his innocent passion. Here is a pretty little anecdote for virgins.

"I remember somewhere to have read a story of a youth, who hesitating in his choice between two young ladies, by both of whom he was beloved, was brought to a decision by means of a rose. It happened one day, as all the three were wandering in a garden, that one of the girls, in a haste to pluck a new-blown rose, wounded her finger with a thorn: it bled freely; and, applying the petals of a white rose to the wound, she said, smilingly, 'I am a second Venus; I have dyed the white rose red.' At that moment they heard a scream; and fearing the other young lady, who had loitered behind, had met with some accident, hastened back to assist her. The fair one's scream had been called forth by no worse an accident than had befallen her companion. She had angrily thrown away the offending flower, and made so pertinacious and fretful a lamentation over her wounded finger, that the youth, after a little reflection, resolved on a speedy union with the least handsome, but more amiable, of the two young friends. Hap

py would it be for many a kind-hearted woman, did she know by what seeming trifles the affection of those whom she loves, may be confirmed or alienated for ever!"

We are so fond of seeing ourselves -in MS. and in print-that we are chary of extract. We do not wish to have our lustre as reviewer eclipsed by that of the reviewed. Yet this is not so bad as the same thing in conversation. In a party of flesh-andblood people sitting at a mahogany table, each individual is as well entitled to let out his share of articulate sounds, as to take in his share of edible substances; and you may as reasonably help yourself with your own spoon out of my plate of Yorkshire pudding, or whip off my glass of Rhenish, as take the English or Scotch words out of my mouth, and seal my lips in silence for the rest of the evening. Were you an S. T. Coleridge, you might perhaps be suffered to monopolize that trade which alone ought to be free; but instead of a Phoenix, you happen to be a gooseand nature abhors an eternal quack as she does a vacuum. You roar and you reason, till we, who have long been dumb, envy the lot of the deaf, and sigh for an Asylum. But now for

an extract.

When

"A very pretty flower garden may be formed of native plants only. living in the country, I have frequently transplanted roots from the neighbouring lanes and meadows; some into the open garden, others into the house, as a resource when weather-bound. To those who reside in London, and love the country, there is a charm in our native plants that is wanting to exotics, however beautiful; they are associated with a variety of rural objects; and bring before the imagination, the fields, woods, hills, and dales, where they were taken. A bunch of wild-flowers is a gallery of landscapes : daisies and buttercups represent fields and meadows; germander, speedwell, herb Robert, and hawthorn, are thick bushy hedges, and grassy banks; blue-bells and primroses are shady woods; the water violet and yellow iris, are standing pools; the marsh marigold is a running brook; and the forget-me-not, a gentle river; the blue-bottle and corn-champion, are fields of rising corn; and the delicate vervain is a neighbouring village. Some flowers, by association, take the form of mills or hay-stacks and I have known them even to portray the features of a

friend. Were I condemned to an eternal residence in the metropolis, the sweetest jasmin, the finest moss-rose, the noblest camellia, the rarest, handsomest, and most odorous of exotics, would have less val ue in my eyes, than a common fielddaisy; and a pot of these, when in London, I generally contrive to have, countcount his guineas. ing the coming buds as a miser would The pretty heathbell (campanula, fig. 30) is also a favourite; some young botanists are puzzled by the specific name, rotundifolia, which is applied to it, the upper leaves being linear, and the lower decaying very early; but if several be drawn up by the root, some will be found to retain the lower leaves, which answer to the appellation, To those who study plants botanically, the rearing of them has an additional charm: it gives us an opportunity of observing them in every stage of their growth, and seeing the changes made in wild plants by cultivation. If a plant prove handsomer than we had reason to anticipate, it seems to reflect a sort of credit on ourselves, which heightens our sense of its beauty."

The next two hundred pages are occupied by animated treatises, full of very accurate details, on Mineralogy, Conchology, Entomology, and Ornithology. Shells, minerals, insects, and birds are described both popularly and scientifically; and the young lady who is up to these five articles (the Florist included), will have no history, and be prepared to procontemptible knowledge of natural ceed to the study of more complete and difficult works. Painting, Music, Dancing, are all treated after the same fashion, in separate articles; and so is Riding and Archery-female accomplishments all-and none more healthful and graceful than the lastHygeia being sister to Maid Marian, and Apollo brother to Robin Hood.

Besides these interesting and useful articles, there are four entitled the Toilet, the Escritoire, Embroidery, and the Ornamental Artist. Let us take a glance at the Toilet:

"It will be a laudable ambition in her to curb those excesses of each revolving mode,' with which she is in some measure obliged to comply; to aim at grace and delicacy rather than richness of dress; to sacrifice exuberance of ornament (which is never becoming to the young) wherever it is possible, to an admirable neatness, equally distant from the prim and the negligent; to learn the valuable art

of imparting a charm to the most simple article of dress, by its proper adjustment to the person, and by its harmonious blending, or agreeably contrasting, with the other portions of the attire. It is a truth which should ever be borne in mind, that a higher order of taste is often displayed, and a better effect produced, by a paucity or total absence of ornament, than by the most profuse and splendid decorations."

That is sound doctrine. A discreet, but not a servile, observance of fashion is then inculcated, and all young ladies warned against extremes. It is rash to adopt every new style immediately as it appears; for many novelties in dress prove unsuccessful, being abandoned before even the first faint impression they produce is worn off; and a lady, it is well observed, can scarcely look much more absurd than in a departed fashion, which, even during its brief existence, never attained a moderate share of popularity. It seems to be a fancy of her own. She is thought to be self-willed at all times; when the wind is due east-mad.

On the other hand, they who cautiously abstain from a too early adoption of novelty, often fall into the opposite fault

"of becoming its proselytes at the eleventh hour. They afford, in autumn, a post-obit reminiscence to their acquaintance of the fashions which were popular in the preceding spring. Such persons labour under the farther disadvantage of falling into each succeeding mode when time and circumstances have defamed and degraded it from 'its high and palmy state;' they do not copy it in its original purity, but with all the deteriorating additions which are heaped upon it subsequent to its invention. However beautiful it may be, a fashion rarely exists in its pristine state of excellence long after it has become popular. Its aberrations from the perfect are exaggerated at each remove; and if its form be in some measure preserved, itis displayed in unsuitable colours, or translated into inferior materials, until the original design becomes so vulgarised as to disgust."

The great first principle of dress is-adaptation. Fashion imperiously upsets it, and reduces half her subjects to dowdies. For what but a dowdy can a dumpy woman be, condemned to dress in a mode especially invented for some tall, slender

arbitress of taste? We differ from Lord Byron, who said,

"Now, on my soul, I hate a dumpy woman,"

You may, indeed, so intensify to your imagination the meaning of "dumpy," that neck and legs, and every thing but face and body are lost; and you see, in your mind's eye, only a smiling waddle of female fatness. But that is not fair; and you might as well spindle up a tall woman into a May-pole, all one thinness from ankle to collar-bone. Place the two

together-each at her very worstand, for our single selves, we prefer the dumpy woman.

Dress a dumpy woman, then, as a dumpy woman ought to be dressed, according to the first great principle of dress-adaptation-and you tenderly squeeze the hand of a very comely body-with a bosom white as a drift of snow. How, indeed, a dumpy woman ought to be dressed is another-guess matter; but we may answer the question so far by negatives. She must not have on her head a cap two feet high; for then, besides that men are afraid of catching a tartar, instead of thereby adding two feet to her stature, she takes two off, and thus measures to the eye exactly two feet on her high-heeled shoes. But such cap extends her laterally beyond all customary or reasonable bounds-and you wonder how she got in at a drawing-room door of the usual dimensions. Her neck being short by hypothesis, Dumpy ought not to wear a necklace of great breadth, if for no other reason than that it gives the spectators pain to see jaw-bone and collar-bone suffering under the same instrument of torture. Neither ought our fat friend to heap a quantity of drapery upon her shoulders; for she ought to remember that they are already in the immediate neighbourhood of her ears; and that her ear-rings (which, by the way, had better be left at home) will be lost in the muslin. Nothing more perplexing to a naturalist than the apparent union of the head-gear and the shoulders of something in white. Six flounces on such a figure ought assuredly not to be; for supposing all our negatives to be affirmatives, and a dumpy woman to dress herself against us by the rule

of contraries, and who could tell whether she were a dumpy, a dowdie, or a dodo?

Taste and judgment are apt to gebewildered in-hair. What must a young lady do who has a head of it fiery-red? Why, she must take a lesson from the sun behind a cloud. Let her cover it partly with some eclipsing net-work, that subdues the colour down to that of the coat of the captain who whirls her in the waltz. By such judicious treatment, and by gown of corresponding and congenial hue, red hair may be tamed down into what, by courtesy, may be called a bright auburn. A fair skin and a sweet smile aid the delusion-if delusion it be-thus Danish locks do execution-and the

"Lass wi' the gowden hair" is by many thought the beauty of the night. But,

"whatever be the reigning mode, and however beautiful a fine head of hair may

be esteemed, those who are short in stature, or small in features, should never indulge in a profuse display of their tresses, if they would, in the one case, avoid the

appearance of dwarfishness and unnatural

the hair be dressed in a style inconsistent with the character of the face, according to those canons of criticism which are

founded upon the principles of a sure and correct taste, snd established by the opinions of the most renowned painters and sculptors in every highly-civilized nation for ages past."

Young ladies ought never to wear many flowers in their hair, or many leaves, whatever be the fashion. If and then, while the lovely wearer, a bud, it should just peep out, now ringlets to some pleasant whisper; with a light laugh, sweetly waves her if a full-blown rose, let it as ye hope to be happily married-be a white York for the hair, Lancaster

one.

for the bosom.

have a very simple, very elegant, We are partial to pearls. They very graceful, very innocent look; with a certain pure, pale, poetical gleam about them, that sets the imagination dimly a-dream of mermaids and sea-nymphs gliding by moonlight along the yellow sands. Be that as it may, we are partial to pearls, even though they be but paste -provided all the rest of the fair creature's adornments be chaste and cheap, and especially if you know that her parents are not rich,—that she is a nurse to several small sisters, and that her brothers are breeding up to the army, navy, bar, and church. Nothing in art more beautiful than -Lace!

"A web of woven air!"

size of the head; and, in the other, of making the face seem less than it actually is, and thus causing what is thereby petite to appear insignificant. If the hair be closely dressed by others, those who have round or broad faces should, nevertheless, continue to wear drooping clusters of curls; and, although it be customary to part the hair in the centre, the division should be made on one side if it grow low on the forehead, and beautifully high on the temples; but, if the hair be too distant from the eyebrows, it should be parted only in the middle, where it is generally lower than at the sides; whatever temptations Fashion may offer to the contrary. As it would be in bad taste for a fair young lady, who is rather short in stature, however pretty she may be, if irregular as well as petite in her features, to take for a model in the arrangement of her hair, a cast of a Greek head; so also would it, for one whose features are large, to fritter away her hair-which ought to be kept, as much as possible, in masses of ving beauty it veils, without hiding,

large curls, so as to subdue, or at least arrange with her features-into such thin and meagre ringlets as we have seen trickling, few and far between,' down the white brow of a portrait done in the days of our First King Charles. There are but few heads which possess, in a sufficient degree, the power to defy the imputation of looking absurd, or inelegant, if

as it has been charmingly called by one who knows how to let it float charmingly over brow or bosom. How perfectly simple it always seems, even in its utmost richness! So does a web of dew veiling a lily or a rose! forehead, from whose ample gleam It imparts delicacy to the delicate it receives a more softening fineness in return; it alone seems privileged, in its exquisite tenuity, to float over the virgin bosom, whose mo

from Love's unprofaning eyes!

So much-yet but little, indeedfor head and breast. The whole figure has yet to be arrayed; but has old Christopher North become a tirewoman, even to his own Theodora? What then? Corporealspiritual!-Oh! heaven! and oh! earth! which is which, asketh some

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